Putin Delivers Mixed Tribute to Wagner Boss Yevgeny Prigozhin after Deadly Plane Crash

Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his condolences to the family of Yevgeny Prigozhin on Thursday, breaking his silence after the mercenary leader's plane crashed with no survivors two months after he led a mutiny against army chiefs.
Putin's comments, which suggested he harbored decidedly mixed feelings about Wagner's mercenary boss, were the most definitive yet on Prigozhin's fate. Before he spoke, the only official statement had come from the aviation authority which said Prigozhin had been on board the downed plane.
Russian investigators have opened a probe into what happened, but have not yet said what they suspect caused the plane to suddenly fall from the sky northwest of Moscow on Wednesday evening.
Nor have they officially confirmed the identities of the 10 bodies recovered from the wreckage.
US officials told Reuters that Washington is looking at a number of theories over what brought down the plane, including a surface-to-air missile.
The US Department of Defense on Thursday said there was currently no information to suggest that a surface-to-air missile took down the plane.
The presumed death of Prigozhin leaves Russian President Vladimir Putin stronger in the short term, removing a powerful figure who launched a June 23-24 mutiny against the army's leadership and threatened to make him look weak.
But it would also deprive Putin of a forceful and astute player who had proved his utility to the Kremlin by sending his fighters into some of the bloodiest battles of the Ukraine war and by advancing Russian interests across Africa which are now likely to be re-organised.
It remains to be seen too how Wagner fighters, some of whom have already spoken of betrayal and foul play, react.
Pledging a thorough investigation which he said would take time, Putin said that "preliminary data" indicated that Prigozhin and other Wagner employees had been on the downed plane. The passenger list suggests that Wagner's core leadership team were flying with him too and had also perished.
Putin paid generous tribute to the renegade mercenary calling him a talented businessman who knew how to look after his own interests and who could, when asked, do his bit for the common cause.
But he also described Prigozhin as a flawed character who had made some bad mistakes.
"I want to express my most sincere condolences to the families of all the victims. It's always a tragedy," Putin said in televised remarks made during a meeting in the Kremlin with the Moscow-installed chief of Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine.
"I had known Prigozhin for a very long time, since the start of the 90s. He was a man with a difficult fate, and he made serious mistakes in life."
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, one of Putin's most loyal allies, said that Prigozhin was his friend and he had asked the mercenary chief "to set aside his personal ambitions".
"But lately he either did not see or did not want to see a full picture of what was going on in the country," Kadyrov said.
'A METALLIC BANG'
The Embraer Legacy 600 executive jet, which had been flying from Moscow to St. Petersburg, crashed near the village of Kuzhenkino in the Tver region north of Moscow.
A Reuters reporter at the crash site on Thursday morning saw men carrying away black body bags on stretchers. Part of the plane's tail and other fragments lay on the ground near a wooded area where forensic investigators had erected a tent.
The Baza news outlet, which has good sources among law enforcement agencies, reported that investigators were focusing on a theory that one or two bombs may have been planted on board.
Residents of Kuzhenkino, the village near the crash site, said they had heard a bang and then saw the jet plummet to the ground. The plane showed no sign of a problem until a precipitous drop in its final 30 seconds, according to flight-tracking data.
One villager, who gave his name as Anatoly, said: "It wasn't thunder, it was a metallic bang - let's put it that way."
Mourners left flowers and lit candles near Wagner's offices in St. Petersburg and at other locations across Russia.
A Telegram channel linked to Wagner, Grey Zone, pronounced Prigozhin dead on Wednesday evening, hailing him as a hero and a patriot who had died at the hands of "traitors to Russia".
Russian militants who fight on Ukraine's side and have carried out several attacks on Russian border regions urged the Wagner Group to avenge Prigozhin's death and join their ranks. It was not immediately clear how members of the Wagner Group reacted to their call.
Amid the absence of verified facts, some of his supporters have pointed the finger of blame at the state, others at Ukraine, which marked its Independence Day on Thursday
Putin said in June that Prigozhin’s mutiny against the army, which saw Wagner fighters shoot down Russian military helicopters, could have tipped Russia into civil war.
The mercenary leader had also spent months criticizing the conduct of Russia's war in Ukraine - which Moscow calls a "special military operation" - and had tried to topple Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, chief of the General Staff.
The mutiny was ended by an apparent Kremlin deal which saw Prigozhin agree to relocate to neighboring Belarus. But he had appeared to move freely inside Russia.
Many Russians had wondered how he was able to get away with such brazen criticism without consequence.
Prigozhin posted a video address on Monday which he suggested was made in Africa. He turned up at a Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg in July.

North Korea's military has been building roads and walls inside the Demilitarized Zone that separates it from the South, the Yonhap news agency reported Saturday.

The construction activities are taking place north of the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) that runs through the middle of the DMZ, the South Korean agency said, citing an unnamed military source.

The report follows an incident last week when South Korean forces fired warning shots after North Korean soldiers briefly crossed the MDL.

South Korean authorities said it was likely accidental, and Yonhap quoted a military spokesman as saying some of the North Koreans were carrying work tools.

"Recently, the North Korean military has been erecting walls, digging the ground and constructing roads in some areas between the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) and the Northern Limit Line in the DMZ," the military source said, according to Yonhap on Saturday.

It was not clear what they were building, the source told Yonhap.

When asked about the report, the South Korean military said in a statement that it was "closely tracking and monitoring the activities of the North Korean military", and that "further analysis is required".

It said it could not share the South Korean response to these actions "to ensure the safety of the personnel proceeding with an operation", without offering further details.

South Korea's spy agency told AFP this week that it had detected signs that North Korea was demolishing sections of a railway line connecting the two countries.

That followed an escalation in the propaganda war between the two Koreas.

North Korea sent more than a thousand balloons carrying trash into the South, describing them as retaliation for the propaganda balloons sent the other way by anti-Pyongyang activists.

Then, South Korea resumed blasting K-pop songs and news broadcasts at the North, using loudspeakers installed at the border.

The resumption of the loudspeaker campaign prompted Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, to threaten an unspecified "new countermeasure".

Putin Delivers Mixed Tribute to Wagner Boss Yevgeny Prigozhin after Deadly Plane Crash